Have you ever wanted to help out an animal in need but didn’t have the time or resources or didn’t want the mess? Well now is your chance! There are two main places to “adopt” online. For farm animals, checkout Farm Sanctuary. For wild animals (which you couldn’t responsibly adopt anyway since they aren’t “pets”) check out Defenders of Wildlife. These make great gifts for both the animals and the receiver. The Defenders of Wildlife adoptions even come with stuffed animals!

How the concept works is you pay a certain amount of money to be used on either a specific animal (as in Farm Sanctuary) or towards the good of the species as a whole (Defenders of Wildlife). Animals “available” include cows, chickens, pigs, rabbits, ducks, goats and sheep on Farm Sanctuary and anywhere from wolves to penguins to hummingbirds on Defenders of Wildlife.